Daydreamer
by EHWIES
Summary: Sometimes love's not diamonds; it just slips off course and skins its knees.


**Daydreamer**

He's sixteen and Bella is smiling, really smiling, something he doesn't see much these days past the cackle and Azkaban greys. "Can we run away together? Somewhere?"

"Bella!"

"Let's do it. Elope in France, fuck our families, and when we graduate, we can—we'll buy out a shop in Knockturn Alley, we'll get away from… all—_this_."

"Have sex on the upper floor when the customers aren't looking."

She laughs, and he laughs, and she means it but Rode doesn't and for now, that's all right. Lies are still true until they're not, and it's a happy life they'd have, isn't it?—shutting out her summer Black bruises and hiding in Hogsmeade corners, imagining they're not fifth years and clinging to safe house. Bella's all sobbing swings and Rode's stock-still, he maybe loves her and maybe can't withstand the pressure cooker of her storms; sometimes love's not diamonds, it just slips off course and skins its knees.

He's thirtysomething—you lose track in here—and it feels like a lie to call her ex-wife from the next cell over, even after all these years.

He's nineteen, and her flat is wonderful: floors falling like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and door wedged crooked into its frame. But she cries cries cries—when her shop's not his dream, when he doesn't like the Dark Lord sympathizer pals she keeps bringing around, when he'd rather read other novels, when he breathes. She's a whole other Bella in the mornings, if she's still in bed as he's leaving for work, calling him back to pull him for kisses and send her love for the day. A lot of it. She giggles, "I _love_ you, I _love_ you, I _love_ you, I _love_ you, I _love_—"

"Yeah, I get it, you love me!" he bites. She sort of sinks, starts wailing again, and then he's wailing too and sometimes Rode can't tell whether she starts it or he does, who hurts first. He's eighteen and he honestly doesn't mind most of the time, Bella can have her friends and he'll have his, have their lives but share this too, and she cites "lack of common interests" as her reason, whatever the hell that means.

He's eighteen and thinks it _so_ gorgeous that they can be who they are—explosion and implosion, among and alone, Dark and greyer—and still _be_, still fit, still open their eyes at night and see peace. They squabble about it often; Bella doesn't think anybody's capable of goodness—just him and her littlest (now, only) sister—the rest must be all assholes and Muggles and beat their children naked in the moonlight, too. The whispers of a Dark Lord give her courage, and he doesn't have to like it to love _her_, not when she is so round and precious and vulnerable, vulnerable as anyone if only you look closely enough. _People aren't good, I don't know why you say they are, but you're sweet, Rode, and I love you for that, so much. I don't know why I'm crying, I'm glad I get off work soon_, she owls him, and Rode shrugs off his boss's raised eyebrow as he opens his sixteenth letter of the day.

Bella's so sorry when, at fourteen, she honest to God chips his tooth as they topple kissing to the ground. "I've permanently altered your face," she says, choking back a sob (perhaps overwrought, but never resented). He doesn't mind much at the time to have a memory of her permanently etched on his reflection.

On Rode's twenty-fifth birthday, he stumbles across her in the Alley and falls into her bed, never mind that he can hardly pull himself together knowing it's the last time, _always_ the last time just this once, except now it's been a full two years since they've spoken and he honestly doesn't think she's coming back again, after tonight. He is a stranger in the candlelight that he doesn't think he'll ever trust again, not now that she's left for good when he'd thought so much, and it all leaves its fingerprints to dirty up his hands, and she's really crossed over now, and he can't find her in there, the round precious thing he adores. He's fourteen and forty and here all at once, and he'll never recover from this girl, and all Rode wants throughout it is her joy. With how easy it is to lose track and how quickly word travels, people all assume they're married the whole time, and he lets them.

He is twenty-one. He keeps writing all these letters—requiems for dreams and wishes on stars—that he hates himself for sending because he knows his owl will return every time with burn marks punished by Bella with a kiss. Yes, Rode writes himself into a frenzy, whiles away all his empty spaces with a beg and a hate, and it's so damn stupid because no amount of words in the world are going to bring back who she is or how she rocks him to sleep, meeting his glances with all the openness anyone could have.


End file.
